


Under Surveillance

by Owlix



Series: Confined Spaces [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-War, self-performed medical proceedure, small acts of personal rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlix/pseuds/Owlix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the mines, even a small personal act of rebellion has meaning. Megatron takes control of his own life where he can find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Surveillance

 

Megatron was summoned from the crowd by a supervisor, just as his shift ended. He picked his way through his shuffling co-workers - all exhausted, some clumsily play-fighting, some stumbling, blank-opticked - and made his way towards the mech standing with a datapad.

Megatron waited in silence. Most likely, he had been summoned for some kind of scolding or punishment. The setup of the mines were such that miners were always breaking one rule or another - they had to in order to do their jobs - which meant that punishment was always a possibility. And besides, the supervisors never needed a real reason to beat the miners, and anything would do as an excuse.

Whatever it was, Megatron wanted it over with as fast as possible. His head was full of poetry, and his shift was over. He wanted to go back to his room and write it down before it left him. He needed to get home before his exhaustion really hit, before the momentum of working wore off and his body slipped into recharge against his will.

“Megatron.” If anything, his supervisor seemed just as exhausted as he felt. “I need to talk to you about your PLB.”

His Personal Location Beacon. All the miners had them installed in their chassis - a safety measure, or so they’d been assured by their bosses. The signal would help recovery workers locate trapped miners in the case of a tunnel collapse. They were entirely optional, at least in theory, but Megatron knew of no miner who had opted out of the procedure. The nightmare of being buried alive under tons of rock and left there was one that haunted all of them.

“Yes, sir? Is it malfunctioning?”

His supervisor gave him a long look, like the answer should be obvious. “No,” he said. “No, it’s working fine. But you’ve been turning it off.”

Ah. “Yes, sir,” Megatron said. “I have. But only when I’m off-shift.”

His supervisor just frowned, optics narrowed.

“Is there a rule against that?” Megatron kept his tone even and calm, just this side of meek. “I had been under the impression that the PLBs were entirely voluntary.”

Megatron’s supervisor gave him a look that Megatron had grown quite familiar with - _Why can’t you just do what’s expected of you and make both of our lives easier?_

Megatron played dumb, forcing his face into a blank stare. “If there’s a rule against turning it off, I’ll leave it on.”

His supervisor sighed. “There’s no rule,” he said. “You’re perfectly within your rights to turn the thing if if you want to. Slag, you can even get it removed, if that’s what you want to do.” He chuckled, no doubt imagining Megatron trapped in a mine cave-in without a PLB. “Look, Megatron, I ain’t trying to scold you. I’m looking out for you. You keep switching that thing off when you’re off-shift, somebody’s gonna start wondering where you’re going and why you don’t want anyone to see it.”

Megatron took a moment to let that threat sink in.

“Thank you, sir.” He nodded his head. “I appreciate the warning. Am I relieved?”

His supervisor snorted and gave Megatron another look that he was familiar with - _You’re a lost cause_ \- and waved for him to go.

Impactor was waiting for him outside the doorway. He didn’t ask, just met Megatron’s optics and waited.

“Supervisor wanted to talk about my PLB,” Megatron said, keeping his voice low out of habit. “I’ve been turning it off when I’m off-shift. Apparently that’s a problem.”

Impactor snorted, a grim grin on his face.

“I’m not convinced that those things are even for safety reasons,” Megatron said. “I did a little digging - reading the public documentation on rescue statistics. Successful miner recovery efforts have hardly gone up at all since they started issuing them. Most of the time they don’t even bother to launch a search. Too expensive. I think those things are just an excuse to keep an eye on us. And not just when we’re working either, apparently.”

Impactor was glaring at him, optics half-shut and dim.

“What?”

“You should watch what you say.”

“It needs to be said. Someone needs to say it.”

Impactor put a hand on him, striking hard enough that Megatron’s sensors registered the touch even through thick armor. A miner’s gesture of affection; to lighter builds it would’ve look like violence.

“I’m saying this because I’m looking out for you,” Impactor said. Coming from him, Megatron believed it. “You keep talking like that, sooner or later someone’s gonna shut you up.”

Megatron set his jaw. He was sure that Impactor had a point, but what was the alternative? Stay silent? Say nothing?

“Look.” Impactor tapped his shoulder one more time with his hand, then pulled away. “You should come out with me tonight. Leave your PLB on. Let them track our path of destruction through an entire swath of bars.” He chuckled, a rough grate. “Hell, if we black out they can use the beacon to send a rescue party.”

The offer was touching. Impactor wasn’t really the type to reach out often. But…

“I really shouldn’t. I have something to do.”

Poetry to write. Impactor knew it, too, judging by his expression. He snorted and rolled his optics - another mech convinced that Megatron was a lost cause.

 

The worst part was that Megatron didn’t even do anything worth hiding.

He spent much of his off-shifts in his room, writing poetry and following the news and reading about the state of Cybertronian society.

He went out drinking with Impactor sometimes - not the epic binges that Impactor preferred, but afternoons at Maccadam’s, the only local pub that allowed miners, was clean, and had big windows to let the daylight in. They sat and drank something other than the lowest-grade energon provided to them while they were on the job, and Impactor begrudgingly read Megatron’s poetry.

He went on walks. Never drives - his alt-mode tended to rip up the finer, smooth pavement of above-ground streets designed for lighter, quicker vehicles. But walking was a nice change from days spent in alt-mode underground, and it was nice to see the sun.

He spent the rest of the time in recharge, trying to let his auto-repair work through his injuries and clear out the status warnings on his HUD, one at a time. Sometimes it could keep up with the amount of damage he took at work, and sometimes it couldn’t.

When he got home, Megatron left his PLB on. He settled into his dirty little room, poured himself a drink, fell asleep with his face on his datapad, trying and failing to write poetry.

 

Megatron’s supervisor gave him a faint little nod during his next shift, and Megatron hated himself for bending.

 _Temporary_ , he told himself. _There’s nothing wrong with a little deception when the odds are stacked against you._

He spent his next off-shift reading about PLBs. The tech wasn’t too complicated, and neither was their integration. Megatron had always had an interest in medicine, although his knowledge began and ended with general first-aid.

He looked at himself in the small mirror in his dirty room, touching a hand to his chest. Here, wired into his neural net, nestled in with the rest of his internals. It was silently broadcasting his location even now.

 

When he was ready, Megatron didn’t hesitate; it wasn’t in his nature.

The first step was allowing himself to be injured on the job, just enough to hide the weld. Megatron let himself slip downhill, driving his bulldozer blade into the path of Impactor's drill. 

It left a long, deep laceration across the blade. Megatron was beaten by his supervisors for his “clumsiness” but as always, he bore it silently. Impactor caught his optic and scowled. He knew Megatron was up to something, and clearly didn’t want to know what.

The on-site medics welded Megatron back together. Shoddy work, all done without pain dampeners. The damage hadn’t gone through his inner plating, but that was fine. It would still serve to cover up the damage he intended to do later.

On his off-shift, alone in his little room, Megatron cut himself open, dug his fingers in, and forced the gap apart. He bore the pain silently; Megatron always had an absurdly high tolerance for pain. It was out of respect for this that he and Impactor had first become something like friends -- _“Never seen a mech take a beating so quiet,” Impactor had said, grinning. “Your vocalizer broken, or are you just that slagging tough?” And when Megatron had struggled to stand, Impactor had offered him his drill arm, and laughed when Megatron took it anyway._

Megatron dug the PLB out, leaving the wires still connected to his neural network so it wouldn’t interrupt the signal. It hurt badly enough to make him swoon, optics flickering dim and wavy static chewing at the edges of his vision.

He made the alterations. They weren't his design, but something he’d found in a Triple M document he’d quietly picked up some time ago. “A Revolutionary’s Handbook” - full of diagrams for making bombs and other hopelessly violent methods to try and change society. Megatron had picked it up hoping for essays on the Triple M's political philosophies and had paged through it in growing horror once he'd gotten it home. Contraband, illegal enough to get him thrown in jail if anyone knew he had it, but at least some of it had been useful in the end.

Megatron put the PLB back into his own chassis and welded his own abdomen shut. That hurt, too, and when he fell back onto his recharge slab when he was finished, he was shaking.

But it was done. If he’d done it right, and if the Triple M datapad could be trusted, the alteration should bounce the signal to match other PLBs in the same series whenever Megatron sent the command, effectively masking his location. The PLB pulses were infrequent enough that no one should notice what he’d done, as long as he wasn’t also being monitored by video.

Megatron shut his optics off and sent the command, switching the PLB to stealth mode.

All that was left to do now was wait.

 

Megatron spent the next week anticipating disaster, sure that it was only a matter of time before the entire weight of the Functionist government came down and crushed him.

He anticipated arrest at every step. He drifted in and out of recharge for his entire off-shift, sure that every noise outside his room was a cop preparing to kick his door in, or worse, the mind-altering Functionist secret police that he’d heard about only in frightened whispers. He destroyed the Triple M datapad - not that it would make a difference if his alterations had been discovered. The PLB was inside of him but it was still government property, and he had altered it.

He spent his next shift in the mines waiting for a beating. Waiting to be pulled aside. Waiting to be disappeared, or set up for a living burial in the mines. He avoided Impactor, not wanting to draw him into his impending demise. Impactor sensed that something was up and avoided him right back.

Megatron waited.

But nothing happened.

No one had noticed.

Megatron slowly realized that no one _would_ notice, either. Not as long as he was smart about things. At work he still let them monitor him, but on his off-shifts, he had his freedom.

Somehow, it changed everything. The Functionist government was big, sure, and it was strong, but Megatron was only a few years old and he’d gotten one over on them all with just an illegal datapad and his own bravery and force of will. The Functionist government was big, and it was strong, but it was not invincible.

 


End file.
